UNIFIL Involvement in 2000 Kidnapping Not News. Involvement of UNIFIL Soldier Who Thought of Lebanon as "Second Homeland", However, Is.
Anne reproduces an Arutz-7 column which shows that UNIFIL-marked vehicles were involved in the kidnapping of the 3 Israeli soldiers in 2000. The father of one of the kidnapped soldiers just published a photograph that shows a van with UN markings involved in the cross-border attack and kidnapping (the side-scandle here is that the van was scrubed from a recently released film showing footage of the kidnapping). Now part of this isn't really news - it's long been known that Hezbollah gotten close to the Israeli soldiers with a van that had UN insignia and license plates.
The UN has always claimed that the reason they didn't turn over the tape was because they had to maintain objectivity in the Israeli-Arab dispute. This was, at best, a little dishonest. Two reasons why are often pointed out, but a third one is rarely mentioned. One reason is that the UN has no obligation to maintain objectivity in disputes between member states and stateless terrorists - although that's true (or is the UN admitting that Hezbollah is an acknowledged representative of the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli conflict?). Another reason is that pretending to be remain objective between attacker and attacked is precisely not the role that an organization dedicated to peace should take.
But this issue of the van isn't mentioned as often as it should be. The entire kidnapping could not have happened if the UN hadn't been so incompetent as to allow their plates to be stolen by Hezbollah. That being the case - the case being that they were already involved and compromised in the kidnapping - you'd think they would have turned over the videotape. That wouldn't have made them biased in Israel's direction - it would at most have just balanced out the help that they had provided Hezbollah in pulling off the kidnapping.
Here's where things get weird though. The father who released this photograph had done some research on where the license plate came from:
However, Chaim Avraham says, it does not show a white car that he knows took part in the kidnapping - a car that "stars," he told Arutz-7 today, in the original movie he and the other families saw a few years ago. "The car became stuck, and the movie shows how a UN vehicle towed it away. Inside that car were found items with the blood of my son and of Adi Avitan." More significantly, in terms of the UN's involvement in the kidnapping, the car had two dismantled license plates reading "UNIFIL 2707" in the back. Avraham has long had a photograph of this, and he released it for publication today...
Avraham says he found, on the internet, a description of UNIFIL vehicle 2707: "The description shows clearly that the vehicle was used by the UN, was always on alert, and was responsible for monitoring Israeli patrols," Avraham said. Arutz-7 has found, interestingly, that the site on which Avraham found this information (cached here) is a personal one belonging to a former Norwegian member of the UNIFIL force. The former peacekeeper - who later married a Lebanese woman and considers Lebanon his "second homeland" - uploaded a picture of the original UNIFIL 2707, with this description: "This old vehicle served as the platoon HQ [headquarters] immediate response vehicle..."
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that two or three UNIFIL soldiers on duty on a given night could not so innocently walk away from the car and then be not so surprised to discover in the morning that the plates were stolen. You just have to believe that two or three people who consider Lebanon "their second homeland" (this Norwegian being one of them) do could place love of country and hatred of Zionists above their professional duties. And now the UN is trying to integrate thousands soldiers from Muslim countries that don't recognize Israel in UNIFIL - and if you suggest that there aren't 10 or 12 among them that will let Hezbollah borrow a jeep, you're racist.
[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
The UN has always claimed that the reason they didn't turn over the tape was because they had to maintain objectivity in the Israeli-Arab dispute. This was, at best, a little dishonest. Two reasons why are often pointed out, but a third one is rarely mentioned. One reason is that the UN has no obligation to maintain objectivity in disputes between member states and stateless terrorists - although that's true (or is the UN admitting that Hezbollah is an acknowledged representative of the Arab side in the Arab-Israeli conflict?). Another reason is that pretending to be remain objective between attacker and attacked is precisely not the role that an organization dedicated to peace should take.
But this issue of the van isn't mentioned as often as it should be. The entire kidnapping could not have happened if the UN hadn't been so incompetent as to allow their plates to be stolen by Hezbollah. That being the case - the case being that they were already involved and compromised in the kidnapping - you'd think they would have turned over the videotape. That wouldn't have made them biased in Israel's direction - it would at most have just balanced out the help that they had provided Hezbollah in pulling off the kidnapping.
Here's where things get weird though. The father who released this photograph had done some research on where the license plate came from:
However, Chaim Avraham says, it does not show a white car that he knows took part in the kidnapping - a car that "stars," he told Arutz-7 today, in the original movie he and the other families saw a few years ago. "The car became stuck, and the movie shows how a UN vehicle towed it away. Inside that car were found items with the blood of my son and of Adi Avitan." More significantly, in terms of the UN's involvement in the kidnapping, the car had two dismantled license plates reading "UNIFIL 2707" in the back. Avraham has long had a photograph of this, and he released it for publication today...
Avraham says he found, on the internet, a description of UNIFIL vehicle 2707: "The description shows clearly that the vehicle was used by the UN, was always on alert, and was responsible for monitoring Israeli patrols," Avraham said. Arutz-7 has found, interestingly, that the site on which Avraham found this information (cached here) is a personal one belonging to a former Norwegian member of the UNIFIL force. The former peacekeeper - who later married a Lebanese woman and considers Lebanon his "second homeland" - uploaded a picture of the original UNIFIL 2707, with this description: "This old vehicle served as the platoon HQ [headquarters] immediate response vehicle..."
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that two or three UNIFIL soldiers on duty on a given night could not so innocently walk away from the car and then be not so surprised to discover in the morning that the plates were stolen. You just have to believe that two or three people who consider Lebanon "their second homeland" (this Norwegian being one of them) do could place love of country and hatred of Zionists above their professional duties. And now the UN is trying to integrate thousands soldiers from Muslim countries that don't recognize Israel in UNIFIL - and if you suggest that there aren't 10 or 12 among them that will let Hezbollah borrow a jeep, you're racist.
[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]
